General/News

2020 Para powerlifting went virtual

Posted by Marie Curtis on
2020 Para powerlifting went virtual

This year’s powerlifting season began with gusto as Manchester, Great Britain and Abuja, Nigeria successfully hosted World Cups in the first prat of the years. But soon, the world health crisis brought the world along with the sporting calendar to a complete halt.

The Covid-19 lockdown caused the World Para Powerlifting to come up with a unique form of a virtual series, which went live on March 31. 

This concept of changing into a virtual platform overnight proved to be a key changer and which is more important is that a large boon for athletes trying to stay fit as well as continue training indoors during the epidemic.

With 25 athletes from 11 countries, the first ever online competition was a resounding success. That paved the way for the Online World Cup Series – a whole series of virtual competitions that were presented by BIGSER.

Head of World Para Powerlifting, Jorge Moreno said that when they created the Series, most part of the world was being locked down and full of uncertainties caused by the virus. It was their way to help athletes stay active as well as do something fun in a safe way.

Colombia’s Fabio Torres and Russia’s Vera Muratova were the winners of the first edition in the men’s and women’s events, respectively.

Torres said about his win that the online competition was really good and looked like a real event that helped athletes to remain strong.

The second series was held in May and attracted 40 athletes from 19 countries where Jordan’s Abdelkareem Khattab and Mexico’s Amalia Perez were the winners.

The third series broke the record when it comes to the number of competitors (55) while the fourth competition was the Online World Cup that had most participant nations (21). David Degtyarev of Muratova and Kazakhstan won both these two competitions.

The fifth series held in October broke a new record with 65 athletes in action competing to earn a place in the Online World Cup Series Finals in November.

Degtyarev and Perez finished first once again, followed by other seven athletes to the Finals with male and female weightlifters competing together.

General

Guidelines on how to guide teenagers in weightlifting

Posted by Marie Curtis on
Guidelines on how to guide teenagers in weightlifting

Research shows that teenagers can get stronger if they follow a supervised weightlifting program. Here are several guidelines on how to guide your teens in weightlifting.

Don’t force them to join weightlifting

If your kids show an interest in lifting, encourage them. If not, don’t force them to do it. The reason is that it is a way to instill a dislike for sports later on. They have the rest of their lives to be serious with exercise. Most of the professional weightlifters who have kids have never attempted proactively to get them to lift weights. It is best to have a policy of actively encouraging your kids to lift, instead of forcing them to do so. If they want to, show them how and try to keep the session light and fun.

Keep the weight light

Your kids shouldn’t grind out too heavy singles when they lift. Remember that the focus should be on form rather than the weight lifted. Adult-sized barbells will be too heavy for a child. Get a bar specifically made for kids, weighing about 11 lbs.

Standard barbell weights should be fine for kids. Depending on the lift, most kids should be able to lift a barbell with 2.5-10 lb plates.

If you want to have your kids lift even lighter weights, buying some microplates, which allow you to make .5-2.5 lb increases in load, is a good option.

Keep weightlifting fun and playful

The most important goal when kids start weightlifting or doing any exercise is to help them get the movements down as well as to instill a love of fitness in them. In addition, many young children don’t have enough long attention ability to follow a regimented program. Just let your kids play with barbells and provide feedback on the form. For example, put some weight on the kid bar and bust out several sets, then they may go play something else, before coming back to do another set.

News

USA Weightlifting Announces the Lineup of 2021 National Events

Posted by Marie Curtis on
USA Weightlifting Announces the Lineup of 2021 National Events

USA Weightlifting has announced the 2021 National events calendar, bringing the top athletes of the premier strength sport to cities around the United States and Western Canada.

USA Weightlifting will hold a Nike National Championships Week, which is new for the 2021-2024 quadrennial. The event is powered by Rogue Fitness and will crown the Junior, Youth, U-25, and Senior National Champions. Fans will have the chance to see the excitement across over one-week competition, culminating in the overall National Championships that remain on two platforms at the end of the week.

Another new for the 2021-2024 quadrennial is that USA Weightlifting will cooperate with Canadian Weightlifting Fédération Haltérophile Canadienne to expand the American Open Series into the Nike North American Open Series, which is also powered by Rogue Fitness, and host the first USA Weightlifting-sanctioned National Event in Canada.

Here is the 2021 National Events lineup:

EventCityDates
North American Open Series East and
National University Championships		Columbus, OH
(The Arnold)		March 4-7
National Championships Week
(Youth, Junior, U25, Senior)		Detroit, MIJune 25-July 4
North American Open SeriesCalgary, AB, CANADASeptember 15-19
North American Open FinalsDenver, CODecember 2-5

Hoping that the impacts of the world health crisis will decrease in the future, USA Weightlifting will go on to work on contingency plans for the events mentioned above. In line with current practices, any decisions about the viability of these events will be made no later than 8 weeks before the scheduled date of the competition.

USA Weightlifting’s Director of Events & Sponsorships Pedro Meloni said that they’re thrilled with the lineup they had put together for the next year. He added that Nationals Week in downtown Detroit would be exciting, and they’re so happy that their friends at Canadian Weightlifting Fédération Haltérophile Canadienne will join them as they expand the American Open Series into Canada.

General/News/Powerlifting Equipment

The Two Best Weight Lifting Wrist Supports in 2020

Posted by Marie Curtis on
The Two Best Weight Lifting Wrist Supports in 2020

Any seasoned weightlifter understands that sometimes the little things can make a major difference in your strength. And wrist straps and wraps are great examples. As you progress in strength training, these small accessories become more and more useful. Here we write down the two best weight lifting wrist supports in 2020.

Mava Sports Ventilated Workout Gloves

Exercise gloves with wrist wraps can help you become stronger by acting like additional tendons and ligaments while the wrist is bent backward. They distribute the burden strain throughout your forearms instead of getting your fingers assist all of it.

Developed with optimized consolation in mind, their light-weight suppleness ensures you get pleasure from a pure grip with none bulkiness. The wrist wraps can be regulated to your private consolation. Meanwhile, the open hand design gives air flow retaining your palms dry and you can avoid smelly gloves.

The Mava final grip exercise gloves were designed to cowl your complete palm and thumb while allowing the remainder of your hand to breath when you are doing your exercises, weightlifting classes, or wods.

Rip Toned Wrist Wraps 18″ Professional Grade

Endorsed by 2014 world champion powerlifter Kevin Weiss, this greatest heavy obligation elastic wrist wrap solely weight lifting wraps help remove failed lifts and defend your wrist joints from damage while practicing heavy or max lifts. The wraps with premium stitching and excessive finish sturdy broader velcro are adjustable and mechanically cleanable.

These excessive efficiency straps provide weightlifters with wrist assist and stability while doing cross-fit, powerlifting, planks, push-ups, burpees, and power training. This product present good assist, are extra snug and permits wrist flexibility.

If you want to quickly and safely enhance your lifts as well as maximize your good points, this new set of wraps are the products of your choice. They are straight-forward to use or take away, although they are pretty stiff.

General/News/weightlifting app

The Best Weightlifting Apps of 2020 (part 3)

Posted by Marie Curtis on
The Best Weightlifting Apps of 2020 (part 3)

Best for Beginners: Fitbod

In the beginning, Fitbod asks for your weight, height, abilities, goals, and some more. Then, it bases on the information you input to build a custom weight training program for you by using a super-smart algorithm. As you log more and more workouts, the algorithm will get smarter. It will adapt and create workouts designed to push you harder.

This app literally fills in the sets, reps, and lifting schemes that you need to perform to see results. In addition, it removes any uncertainty or possibility of discomfort. This is the reason why Fitbod is so great for beginners. Fitbod is quite the similar of a digital personal trainer.

Best for Detailed Workout Logging: Gymaholic

Gymaholic is an app for tracking weightlifting workouts. It is no-frills, yet somehow incredibly detailed. You can track any type of workout set, such as supersets, drop sets, tri-sets, circuits, pyramid sets, sets to failure, and more. It also allows you to tag your weightlifting workouts by types, including TRX, strength, and bodybuilding.

In addition, Gymaholic supports tracking of your one-rep maxes, heart rate during workouts, body measurements, body composition, other personal records, and much more. It integrates with Apple Watch and the Apple Health app so you can see all your data wherever you need it.

Best for Minimal Equipment Workouts: Sworkit

Sworkit is one of the best fitness apps for iPhone. It is there for you when you are in an overcrowded gym or in a hotel gym with a lack of equipment, or any other place where you can’t complete your usual routine. Sworkit is also a great app for busy professionals who don’t have much time, parents who need to practice at home, and travelers who often have limited space.

With Sworkit, you can filter workouts by goals, time, and level of difficulty. If you’re feeling creative, you even can create your own workout by pulling from the app’s exercise library.

weightlifting app

The Best Weightlifting Apps of 2020 (part 2)

Posted by Marie Curtis on
The Best Weightlifting Apps of 2020 (part 2)

Best for In-depth Information: Fitness Point

The free and pro versions of Fitness Point both boast expansive exercise libraries, complete with text descriptions, images, and clear explanations of how each exercise affects your muscles. The more popular exercises also feature video animations to ensure that you lift with good form.

Tracking-wise, Fitness Point provides a comprehensive workout log feature in which you can add reps, sets, weights, rest intervals, the date, and notes. The notes section is very helpful for logging things such as “had a couple of drinks last night” or “only slept six hours” to help users look back and understand the patterns behind their workout performance.

This app also supports workout building, so you can set up routines to use if it is convenient. Fitness Point is also available for Apple Watch, so for those who use iPhones, they don’t even need to use phone during workouts.

Best for Veteran Weightlifters: Strong

Strong helps weightlifters with an amazing suite of features: You can discover new exercises since it’s easy to get stuck in a rut); watch instructional videos (since even the pros need refreshers); customize rest timers so you stay on track; and save any workout as a template to complete again (since no one wants to fiddle with numbers over and over).

On top of all these things, you can also chart your weightlifting progress over any custom date range for any exercises, and track your body weight, body composition, and other body measurements you pick up to log. Strong supports weightlifters who enjoy various workouts with tracking features that allow you to log different types of exercise, from assisted body weight to compound to isolation. You can also track with accuracy as well as tag sets as a warm-up, failure, or drop sets

weightlifting app

The Best Weightlifting Apps of 2020 (part 1)

Posted by Marie Curtis on
The Best Weightlifting Apps of 2020 (part 1)

If you find that most fitness apps are too little or too much for your workout goals, please check out this list of specialized weight-oriented apps focusing on realizing gains and introducing with you the right way to put on more muscle.

The Best App for Simple Workout Tracking: Simple Workout Log

Simple Workout Log is an app that offers a very simple yet functional way to track your weightlifting workouts. It is perfect for the those who wants to spend more time lifting but less time fiddling with an app. This app features almost all the features you may expect: Its minimalistic approach helps you to enter your exercise, how many reps and sets, and the weight you used. You can organize your exercises by creating routines or adding them to categories. The routine feature is very helpful if you usually do the same workouts like a basic powerlifting session.

Simple Workout Log is available both on the Google Play store and on desktops, but the iOS version of the app hasn’t come yet. In the meantime, iPhone users can access Simple Workout Log on any mobile web browser. 

The Best App for Learning New Exercises: Jefit

Jefit is an excellent weightlifting app for those who like a visual refresher of exercises. It features a robust exercise library with photos and videos of real people praticing the exercises. With above 1,300 exercises in the library, you can find almost whatever you need when you feel unsure about a movement.

The app also has a routine planning feature that helps you to build out your workout routines for a week and beyond. There are also pre-built weighlifting routines if you don’t feel like making your own (since let’s be honest, programming workouts is hard work).

If you want to track your workouts, use Jefit’s tracking feature to log exercises, sets, reps, and weight, as well as a workout timer to keep you on track by counting down until your next set.

News

US teacher uses powerlifting to explain physics

Posted by Marie Curtis on
US teacher uses powerlifting to explain physics

In 2006 when she first started weightlifting on the advice of a co-worker, Jennifer Gimmell – a College of DuPage (COD) physics adjunct faculty member – found it to be a fun activity. The grueling workouts provided an amazing stress reliever to help balance the mental challenges of studying subatomic particles at the same times working as a graduate student researcher at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s collider detector in Batavia.

Now a member of COD’s faculty for over 10 years and a physics teacher at Benet Academy in Lisle, Gimmell said that she is surprised to find that weightlifting holds an unexpected correlation to teaching physics to students. Moreover, the sport provides an additional means to connect with college and high school students.

Gimmell’s desire to connect with students and her willingness to take on innovative approaches led to her being chosen as a Supporting Teachers to Encourage the Pursuit of Undergraduate Physics for Women (STEP UP) Ambassador by the American Physical Society. STEP UP Ambassadors are committed to empowering fellow teachers in shifting deep-seated cultural views and to inspiring young women to pursue physics degrees in college.

In 2015, Benet Academy student and U.S. Presidential Scholar Joseph A. Popelka chose her as his most influential teacher. Meanwhile, at COD, she received an Innovation Award from the college’s IDEA Center for a “flipped class” teaching method wherein students view video lectures at home and then spend the time in the classroom actively working on lesson assignments.

Just as in her teaching, Gimmell constantly pushes herself to excel in her lifting. She recently was named one of the top 30 female weightlifters in the sport by the World Powerlifting Organization (WPO) and, as a result, competed at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio.

She said that this year’s Arnold Sports Festival provided an opportunity to push herself beyond her limits, a challenge she embraced. She set personal records with her dead lift and bench press, which also set a WPO record. Gimmell also achieved her first competition total lift of more than 1,400 pounds. She said she couldn’t be prouder of her performance                                                                                                                                                     She added that lifting has provided her with benefits that go beyond physical strength.

General

Three Basic Tips for Beginner Powerlifters

Posted by Marie Curtis on
Three Basic Tips for Beginner Powerlifters

If you’re thinking about starting to powerlift then you’ll need to consider everything from how to structure your program to tips for your first competition. It can feel somewhat overwhelming, but in this guide, I’ll share exactly what you need to know to be successful in the sport of powerlifting.

1. Always squat below parallel

How many times have you seen lifters in training squatting high and saying ill get depth on the day, then the comp comes around and everything falls apart because you haven’t trained to the depth.

Now in the grand scheme of a training cycle is one or two high squats going to ruin your prep? Absolutely not! This is mainly aimed at people who are squatting high week in and week out.

2. Practice the pause in the bench at least once a week.

Just like the squat I’ve seen loads of people saying they can bench this and that but when it comes to a comp and pausing the lift there numbers are way back. Do practice the pause enough and it becomes second nature, my pause bench is even bigger than my touch and go bench at this stage.

3. Never touch and go deadlifts or worse bounce them

By killing it dead once again like the other two lifts your practicing the competition movement and re-enforcing your start position which in turn makes you stronger from that position. I worked with one lifter in particular who claimed a 180kgx8 deadlift yet could only pull 190kg for 1. I asked him to show me his deadlifts and there it was, touch and go every rep. All I had him do was dead stop them, within weeks he was pulling over 200kg.

Seems simple but so many people get it wrong! You could go one further and have your training partner or coach give competition commands to really get you use to what’s to come at competition.

Give it a go and I assure you you’ll be much better off on the day of a competition.

News

World Para Powerlifting set up online competition to support athletes during coronavirus pandemic

Posted by Marie Curtis on
World Para Powerlifting set up online competition to support athletes during coronavirus pandemic

World Para Powerlifting has launched an online competition under the name “Raise The Bar Together” in order to help athletes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

World Para Powerlifting has required participants to make a small donation to humanitarian aid organizations or local clubs in lieu of an entrance fee.

The online competition has been created with the aim of supporting powerlifting athletes to continue their training at home and stay safe during the new novel coronavirus crisis.

Athletes who are competitors are allowed to submit up to 3 videos of lift challenges and they are ranked by their “AH” score, meaning the result of a statistical coefficient.

The “AH” score is used to equalize as well as compare the performances of the athletes between different body weights at competitions in the sport of powerlifting.

Technical officials are also invited to judge the games on the online “Raise The Bar Together” platform.

Sherif Osman of Egypt, a three-time Paralympic champion, welcomes the creation of the online event.

Osman said that with the uncertainty of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, this online competition platform can help all powerlifting athletes to stay motivated and be able to train at their homes safely. It is so exciting to see other athletes’ lifts and results from afar.

The outbreak of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 50,000 people and infected more than 950,000, has caused a near total shutdown of sports worldwide.

It also forced the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games postponed to 2021.

Para Powerlifting World Cups in Colombia, Dubai, and Bogota, planned for March and April, respectively, have all been canceled due to the virus.

Besides World Para Powerlifting, some other organizations have also established online events in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.